Page 508
Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2025 7:55 am
constantly numbing ourselves with food or distractions just to avoid feeling anyone or anything, we’re hiding from these spirits. But we can purify ourselves — for example, the Great Lent in Orthodoxy, or anything really. We can purify ourselves, we can spend more time alone and live rightly, meaning virtues — all of these qualities. And only when you have only bright qualities in you, when you’re as pure as possible, when you believe in God, then this Spirit, God, or something can enter you. And of course, the more experience and knowledge you have, the purer you are, the less distorted you perceive the information coming into you — that is, the Spirit — and the more purely you transmit it.
Question: You say that there is you, Alex — the human — and then there is this force, the Spirit, like another consciousness inside you. And when you are in a spiritual state without the mind — is that still a human, or does the Spirit always appear? Is there a difference?
The state without the mind — I used to call any state without the mind “a state without the mind.” But it turns out, there are different kinds of that state. Figuratively speaking, in the early days, in my roughest drafts — even those that didn’t make it into the first volume of “Alternative History” — I said that there is a socio-material world, vast and diverse, and that it’s all sociology. There are rockers, rappers, rich people, poor people, family-oriented ones, those who love partying — that’s all different worlds, and we can enter them. Each of these worlds prefers its own style, clothing, music, the places they go. These people are so split into groups that even their choice of vacation spot is different. Someone chooses Thailand, someone Bali, someone Georgia. Why is that? Because these are different social layers, different worlds, different people, and there are many such socio-material worlds. And to step out of them, out of their influence, just to be alone with your inner nature or with God, or simply to see all this societal influence on you and detach from it, to look at it from the outside — I called that “without the mind.” It’s just like, when you have thoughts, needs, and you’re there. The moment you switch off your thoughts, it’s like you’re at zero, and you’re looking at everything from the outside. But again, that was a rough, on-the-fingers explanation by me as a schoolboy or student of what the material world is and what spirituality is. But it’s primitive
Question: You say that there is you, Alex — the human — and then there is this force, the Spirit, like another consciousness inside you. And when you are in a spiritual state without the mind — is that still a human, or does the Spirit always appear? Is there a difference?
The state without the mind — I used to call any state without the mind “a state without the mind.” But it turns out, there are different kinds of that state. Figuratively speaking, in the early days, in my roughest drafts — even those that didn’t make it into the first volume of “Alternative History” — I said that there is a socio-material world, vast and diverse, and that it’s all sociology. There are rockers, rappers, rich people, poor people, family-oriented ones, those who love partying — that’s all different worlds, and we can enter them. Each of these worlds prefers its own style, clothing, music, the places they go. These people are so split into groups that even their choice of vacation spot is different. Someone chooses Thailand, someone Bali, someone Georgia. Why is that? Because these are different social layers, different worlds, different people, and there are many such socio-material worlds. And to step out of them, out of their influence, just to be alone with your inner nature or with God, or simply to see all this societal influence on you and detach from it, to look at it from the outside — I called that “without the mind.” It’s just like, when you have thoughts, needs, and you’re there. The moment you switch off your thoughts, it’s like you’re at zero, and you’re looking at everything from the outside. But again, that was a rough, on-the-fingers explanation by me as a schoolboy or student of what the material world is and what spirituality is. But it’s primitive